The “Friends of Monsignor John Urell” made a big mistake when it posted his deposition on its Web site, www.friendsofmonsignorjohn.com. They forgot to redact the names of the sexual-abuse victims mentioned during the five hours of question-and-answer-and-refuse-to-answer Urell underwent last summer. Not all victims have agreed to have their names made public. At least six names were wrongly spun into cyberspace.

Victims’ attorney John Manly immediately sent a letter to Web-site operator and well-known O.C. politico Matt Cunningham that asked: “Are you insane?” Cunningham redacted the names and reposted the deposition, along with an apology saying it was an inadvertent mistake. Cunningham says the unredacted version was up for about 22 hours.

He called it a “stupid accident. … We have nothing against the victims. I feel horrible.” So does John Hanna, another well-known leader of the “Friends.”

But it didn’t end there. Monday afternoon, two victims who are open about their abuse showed up at the regular meeting of the Rancho Santiago Community College Board of Trustees of which Hanna is president. Hanna says he’s never mentioned his board post in the context of Urell. I can find no record of him doing so, although some articles last week made note of it.

Whatever Hanna’s intentions, abuse victims Joelle Casteix and Esther Miller say, the very fact that he is an elected official necessarily drags the college district into whatever he does publicly. During the meeting’s public-comment period, Casteix spoke about the secrets Urell kept for years and asked the rest of the board to censure Hanna. (It won’t.)

Miller told the board she had “struggled many, many long hours,” about whether to go public, and when she saw the Web site had outed some victims who had decided not to, “I can’t tell you the trauma in my heart it brought back up.” She choked back tears as the college officials sat stock still and soaked in probably the most unusual set of comments it has received in some time.

After Casteix and Miller spoke, Hanna passed the gavel to someone else, and met privately with the two women. Casteix told me later he was nice, but “I don’t think he understands the gravity of what is happening. … It may not be malicious, but it was construed as malicious by a lot of people.”

But within hours of the board meeting, Hanna and Cunningham conferred and they removed even the link to the redacted version of the deposition from the Web site and other related documents. Now you just get an email link for more info. “We can understand now that victims would see some of the content as being insensitive,” Cunningham told me. Sounds like they are starting to get it.

It’s a very strange coalition, Cunningham and Hanna. Hanna is the former chairman of the Democratic Party of Orange County and has run for partisan office. Cunningham is knee deep in local Republican politics, running the popular “center-right” Red County Web site and doing communications work for conservative causes. His wife, Laura, is former deputy chair of the O.C. Republican Party.

What they have in common is Urell. Hanna and Urell went to high school together (Tustin, ’69). Urell baptized all seven of Hanna’s children. “He’s in trouble now,” Hanna said at the board meeting. “I do not excuse any of his conduct … but I’m not a summer soldier. I’m not a summer friend.”

Cunningham only came to know Urell when the priest took his most recent assignment as pastor of St. Norbert’s in Orange. “We’re not even buddies,” Cunningham told me. “I just think he’s a great pastor. He really brought the parish back to life.”

Having never covered abuse cases like this before, my gut reaction once would have been to strongly empathize with Cunningham and Hanna. If it were one of the three or four priests I really admired, I might be doing what they’re doing. The one thing I’ve come to realize in the last couple of months, however, is how much I don’t know about abuse victims’ pain.

So Cunningham and Hanna pass the friendship test. But at what point has someone done something so wrong you can no longer be their friend? I suppose no one is beyond that if they own up to what they did, are truly contrite and make amends. With Urell still in Canada and not talking, it is impossible to know how far he’s now willing to admit his mistakes in keeping the church’s secrets.

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